So You Like to Play Games?
by siriuslyguys
Summary: Julie liked to play games. She liked them all the way up until she fell into the Joker's little game with Gotham. Will she learn to play by his rules?


_Disclaimer: I own Julie. I do not own the Joker, he owns me._

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**So You Like to Play Games?**

By 10 am, Julie's morning was shaping up to be one of the best she had ever had. It was the first time in months that she slept for a solid eight hours without waking up in the middle of the night. While examining her face in the bathroom mirror, she noticed that the last pimples of her teenage years were finally beginning to clear up, and that the bags that usually plagued her eyes were slightly less prominent than usual. Her half blonde, half brown hair seemed to fall more neatly around her face, and she could have sworn that she saw a happy glimmer somewhere deep in her blue eyes.

Julie skipped all the way from the bathroom to the kitchen. She didn't even mind that her father had left early that morning to finish some work at the lab. His job as a lab technician for Wayne Enterprises often kept him at work late into the night. It was only recently that he had begun to forgo breakfast with his daughter in order to fit in a few extra hours of work.

It wasn't until she was standing right in front of the fridge that she noticed the note taped neatly to the front.

I'll be home at 5 sharp to pick you up for the tournament.  
Don't forget to look over the scenarios we practiced.

Love, Dad

The chess finals…Julie had almost forgotten. She had blown away the competition at the last tournament, but these were the city-wide finals. This year the event had finally gotten the attention it deserved. There was supposed to be a much bigger audience than in past years. It certainly didn't hurt that Bruce Wayne coughed up a donation for some prize money for the top three finishers.

Julie usually felt nervous the day of a tournament, but today she was uncharacteristically confident. She was positive that she could snag one of the top three places and win the promised prize money.

She grabbed a bowl of cereal and was on her way to the living room when she saw the card. She felt the bowl slide from her hand, but she barely heard it as it crashed to the floor and shatter, spilling its soggy contents all over the floor. Her chess board was set up on the table, every piece exactly where it should be. The only thing amiss was the joker card sitting conspicuously in the middle of it.

Julie stared at the board, not quite believing what she saw. She knew exactly what this was, and she knew exactly what it meant. She had seen the news the last few months. She had read the papers. She knew that she was totally screwed. She'd heard horrible stories of people who found joker cards delivered with their morning papers, who then turned up dead in their bathtubs the very next day, their faces carved with gruesome Glasgow smiles. Nobody who found one of these cards lived to tell the tale, yet somehow everyone in Gotham seemed to know of and fear their existence.

Her first response was panic. She ran to the phone and had dialed half her father's cell phone number before she slowly put it back on the receiver. What could he do for her? What could anyone do for her now? She might as well be dead already. The man had orchestrated more deaths than she could count in ways more horrible than she could possible imagine. Why even fight back?

Her second response was slow-onset confusion. This didn't make any sense. What had she done to get the Joker's attention? She was positive that this was the real deal. She didn't know anyone stupid enough to pull this kind of prank, especially when the Joker had just escaped from Arkham two weeks earlier. The entire city was on edge, waiting for his terrorizing to begin again. People barely uttered his name out of fear that he would somehow magically appear before them, ready to destroy their lives.

So why her? What had she done to make herself stand out amongst Gotham's millions of citizens? She was just the average teenager. She had no political or criminal connections. Neither she nor her father was rich or famous. Her mother had gotten remarried after her parents' divorce, but her step-father was a nobody and her mother was a kindergarten teacher.

All that was really special about her were her chess playing abilities, but she didn't see the Joker as the kind of guy who cared all that much about chess. The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. She was hours away from playing one of the most important games of her life, and suddenly the Joker swoops in to kill her and ruin her only chance at having a very small amount of fame and glory. She wanted to be remembered as someone important, not as just another nameless, faceless victim.

Rage was Julie's third and final response. So the Joker wanted to extend her into his little game, huh? What was he going to do, blow her up? Was she supposed to be his introduction back into the world of ruining people's lives after his short stay in the loony bin? She could envision his plan in her mind. Blow up chess geek, scare masses with seemingly unprovoked murder, continue to kill and mutilate people that actually mattered and string along the crazy vigilante dressed as a bat. He expected her to be a willing, gibbering pawn in his little game. She would show him. If she was going to die anyway, why not bring the psychotic clown down with her?

Julie angrily stormed her way over to the hall closet. She sifted through countless pairs of old shoes and moldy raincoats before she finally found the boxes of stuff that her mother had left behind when she moved out. Every year for three years her father would mention that they should probably send that stuff to her in Boston, and every year they had put it off. Julie found what she was looking for at the very bottom of the largest box. So he wanted to play games with her? Fine. She could play along, but she would play by her own rules. He wanted her to cower in fear while he reclaimed his hold over Gotham, but she had other ideas. She cocked the hammer of her mother's .44 Magnum revolver. It had been safely stowed away in this closet for far too long. She remembered how her mother used to say that every woman living in a big city like Gotham needed to have some sort of protection. In retrospect, Julie couldn't agree with her more.

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**Hey guys! This is siriuslyguys speaking. This is my first fanfic ever so PLEASE REVIEW!!! I would definitely appreciate it...sorry if this chapter was a little tame but there will be more action and violence in the future (cough cough, gestures to .44 Magnum). **

**p.s. Joker to appear in the next chapter!!!**


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